Quinndell is at a loss for words.
With the baby girl wailing at fall volume, Randolph tries to raise up and is just about to say something when Claire slides her arms down along the post, kneeling so she can catch Randolph’s eye, shaking her head and mouthing no. She looks over at Lyon and gives him the same message.
Quinndell’s face is going through a remarkable series of changes, from surprise to confusion to fear and then finally there is an effort, not entirely successful, to appear casual. “Mr. Welby?”
Randolph has slumped against the rope around his chest, his eyes barely visible under the brim of his cowboy hat.
“Mr. Welby, please answer me. What are you doing with a child here? This is what Carl was trying to tell me, isn’t it? Welby!”
Nothing.
Quinndell eases toward the center post where Randolph is tied, the doctor finding the little man’s leg with the toe of his shoe, nudging him as the baby continues screaming in the back room. “What’s that child doing here?”
Nothing.
Quinndell motions with the gun and kicks harder. “You rescued one of mine, didn’t you?”
Nothing.
“Answer me, goddamn you!” Quinndell shouts as he repeatedly kicks Randolph’s leg.
“Why are you doing that?” Claire asks. “He’s dead.”
“What did you say? I can’t hear you with that fucking crying.
Claire waits a beat and then asks, “What crying?”
Quinndell brings the pistol up and points it in her direction, Claire quickly moving around to the far side of the post she’s tied to. Lyon does the same.
“If either of you know anything about that baby,” Quinndell demands, still shouting to be heard above the crying, hurting his injured throat, “you’d better tell me right now!”
Lyon calls to him. “Quinndell, you murder two people in cold blood and now you hear babies crying, what the hell was in that injection Mary gave you?”
“What? What did you say?” He fires in Lyon’s direction, the bullet hitting a side wall as Lyon crouches to the floor, this second shot causing the child to scream all the louder. “I’ll kill you, then I’ll strangle the little bastard with my own hands.”
“Killing us,” Claire says calmly, “won’t stop you from hearing crying babies, you’ll hear them crying for the rest of your life.”
“What?” Quinndell takes a moment to think this through. “What, you’re trying to make me think I’m insane, that’s awfully feeble, my dear, that’s —” But he can’t talk with that goddamn crying going on, Quinndell again losing his composure and shouting toward the back room. “Shut up!”
The baby continues shrieking.
Quinndell’s scalp suddenly itches and he begins scratching it, causing his hair to stick out all over his head. “I know what happened, nothing very mysterious about this, Welby found one of the babies before it rolled off that rock, he brought it back here —”
The crying has stopped.
Quinndell pauses, cocking his head one way and then the other.
“What’s wrong now?” Claire asks.
“It stopped.”
“What stopped?”
“The —” But then he catches himself. “Nice try, folks.” Quinndell moves carefully toward a small table where two oil lamps are burning. “I smell kerosene so I know he has lanterns in here somewhere,” the doctor says, moving his hands until they find the table. “I gave directions to the men who are picking me up, but I also told them that a fire would light their way.” He has found one of the glass lamps and is grasping it by the base. “The scenario is perfectly clear. Welby killed Carl and Mary and then set the cabin on fire, burning himself to death along with you, Claire, and with your famous boyfriend too.”
Claire asks him if he still hears babies crying.
Quinndell’s face is set hard as he heads for the post where she is tied. “If you think this blind man is afraid of fire, you’re sadly mistaken, dearie. I’ll break this lamp at your feet, burn you at the stake for the witch you are, I’ll dance to your screams. The baby will burn too, unless of course I was just imagining —”
“Hey, Doc,” Lyon says, “if you’re setting this up to make it look like Welby killed us all, how do you explain the fact that he’s tied to a post?”
Quinndell stops. He doesn’t want to give Lyon the satisfaction of being right but it’s true of course, he can’t leave the hermit tied up. Still holding the kerosene lamp, Quinndell slides his feet along the floor until he comes to Randolph’s legs, which he kicks several times. “Dead,” he says, kneeling on the floor, putting the lamp down, slipping the pistol into his pocket, reaching for the rope tied around Randolph’s chest.
“I tink not.”
Quinndell jerks back just as Randolph kicks out with his uninjured leg, knocking over the lamp, which breaks, spilling kerosene that ignites with blue and yellow flames spreading across the floor.
Making whimpering sounds, Quinndell leaps to his feet and takes rapid steps backward as he pats his legs with both hands, checking to see if the fire has ignited his clothing, carelessly backing up until he is within Lyon’s reach.
Pressing his torso against the post, Lyon has stretched his arms out as far as he can, waiting for the doctor’s arrival. Although his wrists are tied together, Lyon can still use his hands, grabbing Quinndell by the hair and pulling him close, the two of them struggling now, the post between them, Lyon determined not to let him go, not this time, no matter what.
Lyon slides his arms down the post, pulling Quinndell to the floor, one of Lyon’s hands gripping the doctor’s hair while the other is trying to reach his throat.
The kerosene fire has spread to a bookcase, igniting a row of westerns, filling the room with smoke as the baby begins crying again from the back room.
Now Lyon is trying to slip his tied wrists over Quinndell’s head, wanting to use the rope as a garrote, but his position is made awkward by the post, and the doctor, flat on his back, manages to escape that intended choke-hold, trying to scoot out from under Lyon’s hands, both of those hands ending up on Quinndell’s face, Lyon’s thumbs on those beautiful blue eyes.
“Bwind him, Mistah Wyon!” Randolph shouts as the infant cries all the more loudly.
Blind him? Lyon presses on the glass eyes but lacks the will to press harder, trying desperately to keep Quinndell’s head from slipping away.
Now it is Claire who is screaming it. “Blind him!”
Quinndell eases his hold on Lyon’s wrists, enabling Lyon to half stand, maneuvering to put his weight behind his arms, both fascinated and repulsed by the feel of those glass eyes under his thumbs.
“Please, John,” Quinndell says as he sneaks a hand down to his coat pocket, reaching in for the pistol.
“What?” Lyon demands.
Quinndell has the gun out. “Please don’t hurt me.”
Claire shrieks a warning but Lyon pays it no attention, the doctor’s plea having already enraged him, Lyon instantly dropping his weight onto his thumbs, driving them into the doctor’s eyes.
Lyon watches as those blue and white eyes twist crazily in their sockets, briefly making Quinndell appear cross-eyed before the glass orbs are forced up out of the sockets, Lyon’s thumbs replacing them as he pushes down harder, Quinndell struggling beneath this piercing like an animal being ritually tortured, the doctor losing the pistol as his body arches, as Lyon growls deep in his throat, gritting his teeth, spittle forming at the sides of his mouth, bouncing his weight onto his thumbs to drive them deeper into what feels like wet gristle, some kind of tough tissue that Lyon can’t break through, Quinndell howling, Lyon increasing the torture by moving his thumbs around within those eye sockets, feeling a shelf of bone on the interior roof of the sockets, pressing hard against that flat bone, Lyon’s fingers clawlike over Quinndell’s forehead, getting a firm grip and pushing upward with his thumbs, using all his strength, that shelf of bone cracking and then breaking, cutting Lyon’s thumbs as they push up into Quinndell’s brain, the doctor’s howling and the infant’s crying competing in some kind of crazed bidding, each raise in volume matched and raised again until the howling and crying achieve merger, one voice now, inharmonious but joined, one single, final crescendo terrible enough for God to hear.